Update (3/9/12): Essential Research. The weekly Essential Research report has fallen into line with other pollsters in giving Labor its best result since March – up two on the primary vote to 34% and one on two-party preferred to 55-45. The Coalition is down a point to 48%, a result it last recorded in April. The poll has 52% thinking female politicians receive more criticism than men against only 4% less and 40% the same, and very similar results (51%, 6% and 38%) when the subject is narrowed to Julia Gillard specifically. A question on which groups would be better off under Labor or Liberal governments find traditional attitudes to the parties are as strong as ever, with wide gaps according to whether the group could be perceived as disadvantaged (pensioners, unemployed, disabled) or advantaged (high incomes, large corporations, families of private school children). Respondents continue to think it likely that a Coalition government would bring back laws similar to WorkChoices (51% likely against 25% unlikely).
Deakin is centred on the eastern Melbourne suburbs of Blackburn and Nunawading, extending eastwards along the Maroondah Highway to Ringwood and Croydon. At the time of its creation in 1937, it extended far beyond the city limits to Seymour and Mansfield, before gaining its wholly urban orientation in 1969 and assuming roughly its current dimensions when it lost Box Hill in 1977. A trend of increasing Liberal support as the electorate extends eastwards is better explained by diminishing ethnic diversity than by income: in its totality, the electorate is demographically unexceptional on all measures. The redistribution has cut the Labor margin from 2.4% to 0.6% by transferring 18,000 voters in the electorate’s south-western corner, at Blackburn South, Burwood East and Forest Hill, to Chisholm; adding 8000 voters immediately to the east of the aforementioned area, around Vermont South, from Aston; and adding another 10,000 voters around Croydon in the north-east, mostly from Casey but partly from Menzies.
For a seat that has been marginal for most of its history, Deakin has brought Labor remarkably little joy: prior to 2007 their only win was when the Hawke government came to power in 1983, and it was lost again when Hawke went to the polls early in December 1984. The seat presented a picture of electoral stability from 1984 to 2001, when Liberal margins ranged only from 0.7% to 2.5% (although the 1990 redistribution muffled the impact of a 4.3% Liberal swing). Julian Beale held the seat from 1984 until the 1990 election, when he successfully challenged controversial Bruce MP Ken Aldred for preselection after redistribution turned the 1.5% margin into a notional 1.9% margin for Labor. Aldred accepted the consolation prize of Deakin and was able to retain the seat on the back of a sweeping statewide swing to the Liberals. He was in turn unseated for preselection in 1996 by Phillip Barresi, who held the seat throughout the Howard years.
Barresi emerged from the 2004 election with a margin of 5.0%, the biggest the Liberals had known in the seat since 1977. The substantial swing required of Labor at the 2007 election was duly achieved with 1.4% to spare by Mike Symon, whose background as an official with the Left faction Electrical Trades Union had made him a target of Coalition barbs amid controversies surrounding union colleagues Dean Mighell and Kevin Harkins. Symon’s preselection had been achieved through a three-vote win over local general practitioner Peter Lynch, the candidate from 2004, who reportedly won the 50% local vote component before being rebuffed by the state party’s tightly factionalised Public Office Selection Committee. Andrew Crook of Crikey reported that Symon had backing from the Bill Shorten-Stephen Conroy Right as a quid pro quo for Left support for Peter McMullin’s unsuccessful bid for preselection in Corangamite. Symon was re-elected in 2010 with a 1.0% swing in the face of an attempt by Phillip Barresi to recover his old seat, which was perfectly in line with the statewide result. He was rated by one source as undecided as Kevin Rudd’s challenge to Julia Gillard’s leadership unfolded in February 2012, but soon fell in behind Gillard.
The Liberal candidate at the next election will be Michael Sukkar, a 30-year-old tax specialist with Ashurt, the law firm previously known as Blake Dawson. Sukkar emerged a surprise preselection winner over John Pesutto, a lawyer and Victorian government adviser said to be closely associated with Ted Baillieu. VexNews reported that also-ran candidates Phillip Fusco, Terry Barnes and Andrew Munroe were eliminated in that order, at which point Pesutto was in first place, state government staffer Michelle Frazer was second, and Sukkar and former Melbourne candidate Simon Olsen were tied for third. After winning a run-off against Olsen, Sukkar crucially managed to sneak ahead of Frazer, who unlike Sukkar would not have prevailed against Pesutto in the final round due to a view among Sukkar’s backers that she “wasn’t up to it”.
I sort of hope Howard’s a stalking horse re Abbott. They certainly deserve each other. Howard’s undermining Abbott would be an entertaining counter to Abbott’s preparedness to abandon him the instant it’s expedient. So long as they bring each other down.
I don’t think the government is aiming for an early election.
However, they are certainly working very hard to put themselves into the position that, if an early election is forced (death or resignation of a member, etc) there is every likelihood they could claw back enough in the campaign to win.
The sooner they can get themselves into that position, the more “clear air” they will generate and the more the opposition hysteria will be seen for what it is.
In a virtuous loop, that should enable them to build up their core support more easily and quickly.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/a-business-reporters-greatest-value-lies-in-asking-hard-questions-20120831-255w2.html
[A business reporter’s greatest value lies in asking hard questions
Date September 1, 2012
Ian Verrender
Business columnist
A fawning relationship helps no one.
A QUARTER of a century. It’s a long time to be stuck in the same place, unless of course it is exactly where you always wanted to be.
Unfashionable though it may these days, longevity in the workplace does have its rewards. It may not deliver the fabulous salary increases that those with a more mercenary mindset achieve. But it affords one the luxury of taking the longer view, a more considered appreciation of history: of a company, an industry, an economy, a nation and the individuals that live and work there.]
good final article
Victorian state poll average and seat projection
http://poliquant.com/victoria-state-polling-overview-and-seat-projection/
@wendy_harmer: Required reading. Monica Attard @attardmon tallies the money spent and the lives lost in Afghanistan war http://t.co/fEiGFYDe
If you think Alan Jones is the only hateful individual on talk-back radio in bagging women you would be wrong.
Local Red Neck Radio here in Perth, 6PR, has a Friday segment called “Free For All Friday” in which our local Paul Murray, Liberal Party mouthpiece and former editor of the West, has Larry Graham and token female Jane Marwick? – I think – on air to “discuss” the events of the week – usually an anti-Labor love-in.
Graham is a sometime ex-State Labor/Independent pollie who held Pilbara (I think) at some time in the distant past. He is pompous at best, and patronising at worst.
I digress.
The two males got stuck into Julia for the $350 million, or whatever the figure is, being given by way of aid to some program in the Pacific nations to help the greater involvement of women.
This policy question was fair game but when Graham suggested that the PM was really after cutting off (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) male appendages and putting them in a box the two men fell into sniggers of laughter and snide comments allowing their inherent anti-female attitude shine through.
Even the token female had to bring them to account -protesting (lamely) that the “testosterone was thick in the air”.
When you hear this type of crap on air, you realise there are in fact, as the polls seem to suggest, a cohort of men – maybe 45 yoa or older, who just cannot stomach JG mainly because she is female.
It is all very well for the conservatives to poo-poo the “hide behind the gender when things get tough” line but the contemptuous attitudes of Murray and Graham said it all.
Alan Jones is far from alone.
Damn it, if only Julia would break down and cry. She would probably push the polls up by about 5% with these trogs. They could then show their more caring and compassionate side.
BSA
Who is Howard backing then?
ajm @ 102
Exactly. Well said. They are not aiming for an early election. It used to be called governing properly for the future and planning ahead, but that possibility is now so discounted and ignored, that the Govt “must” be preparing to call an early election.
Interesting that Kevin Rudd has made a few public appearances in the last week or so. However, they were pretty well calibrated towards promoting the government or Labor in general (and opposing the colaition) rather than any trace of the dreaded destabilsiation.
He may well have decided that Labor under Julia Gillard is actually pretty well placed (as many here have continued to believe)to win the next election, so his best move is to get with the project.
Worth keeping an eye on this website
http://limitednews.com.au/
Twitter
https://twitter.com/LtdNews
[Limited News is the collective work of a bunch of people who like to write things and would like to share them with you. ]
Many of the contributers would be familiar to those of who follow various politicis junkies on twitter.
And some linkes to some good articles (not theirs) they’ve found
http://limitednews.com.au/2012/09/weekend-long-reads/
[Take some time this weekend to delve a bit deeper and enjoy these long reads.]
[I thought the dental program was especially weird. It was something I would have expected as an election promise.]
Losing $1 billion a year on a scheme that should have cost a fraction of that, one that Abbott introduced, and one that seems to have been designed to be rorted, might have made them cast around for a better way to fix teeth.
There is no way they’re going for an early election. Not enough blowtorch has been applied to the Abbott belly to do that. There are still some out there who think he’s going to fix everything by sprinkling it with Liberal Party woofle powder and waving a magic wand (for those Captain Fortune tragics out there… “Ahoy shipmates!”).
The timing is wrong too, to stop Abbott’s crackpot “Rolling Thunder” theory of continual double dissolutions (and Carney’s wet dream of the Tories repealing every bit of Labor legislation).
The eggs are being cracked at Fairfax and News, but they’re keeping the shell, not the egg. These “news” organizations are now thin veneers of their former selves. Much of the rank and file, behind the scenes editorial staff have taken their packages, plus a few (too few) front-liners.
We’ll need to see whether continuously telling half their readership they are mugs find sinks in as perhaps not the greatest business plan inthe world. I have no hope for News on this score, but there’s a possibility that Fairfax might twig.
So, best option is to wait, and force Abbott to wait it out. He’s the one who wants to declare full time at the half time whistle.
Let him stew.
[Peter Brent @mumbletwits
After today how are we gunna learn Kim Carr’s current thinking?
10:55 AM – 1 Sep 12]
Leroy
?
Leroy:
What is Mumble referring to?
Yes, I’ll tell you when the election will be held?
The next election will be held either on a) the end of August 2013 or b) the end of October 2013.
The government will run its full term as promised. There is absolutely no reason not to do so.
September is when the final series in the NRL and the AFL is staged therefore would not be a good time to hold an election campaign.
I’d favour option b) 😎
COALITION backbenchers are being urged by Ted Baillieu’s office to run ads in local papers putting a positive slant on TAFE funding cuts
The Conservatives are the ultimate political hypocrites and shape-changers, aren’t they?
The Labor Party spends $1 on an ad, so anaemic in it’s political intent that they have to get it past the Auditor General before they can run it, and the Coalition complain like stuck pigs anyway. Yet Campbell Newman can OK a $500000 propaganda campaign to attempt to brainwash the Queensland electorate that his zealotry in making swingeing Public Service cuts is more benign than breathtaking-and this before his bum has barely warmed the Premier’s chair; and now Baillieu is dipping his patrician fingers into the public purse in an attempt to run interference on the lived experience of his TAFE cuts.
Not only that, but you have the federal Coalition attempting to pull the same shufty on the electorate wrt their dismemberment of whole departments at the federal level, and their devolution back to the cash-strapped States, who won’t be able to fund them properly when they do get proprietorship(but just so long as Big Gina gets a tax cut so she can fund more ‘business opportunities’ to employ the indolent at less than the Minimum Wage today, then that’s OK. I mean, you have to get your priorities Right, don’t you, after all?).
And you get all this taxpayer-funded propaganda overlayed with the sort of reporting from Jacqueline Smelly, or Maley, or whoever she is, which Bushfire Bill alluded to earlier, that runs the ruler ever so lightly over the Coalition’s antics and gives them the big tick because, well, they are ever so entertaining in their malevolent intent.
Not to mention the ‘Hold Your Nose While You Type’ pieces from the likes of Shaun Carney and Peter Hartcher, that give one the impression, darling, of endurance and forebearance for the cause, of engineering the return of the Master Race to rule over us.
Which all just makes you think of a New Feudalism, really. With the Born to Rulers, the simpering and flattering Courtiers, the dumb as fence posts, dumbed-down electorate, fed their bread and circuses to keep them bovine benign or incandescent with rage. When too much information, is not enough of ‘Just the facts, Ma’m’.
And then you have the federal Labor Government, battling it all, as they try and push good policy upstream, like a salmon hoping to spawn the future.
Which is why, at the next election, the Man of the Media must be defeated by the Woman of the People.
BB
Very true, and they may go from being slightly credible shit sheets to totally unbelievable shit sheets as a result.
On the other hand, sometimes it’s very interesting when a generation is cleaned out in an organisation. There just may be some real gems that have not been able to emerge in the past because of the weight of overburden. We can only hope.
If not, I think those predicting the same fate for newspapers as for the Arctic ice sheet may well be on the money – gorn and gorn faster than anyone thought possible.
victoria – I take it one or more of the fairfax departees were a conduit for Kim Carr.
Leroy
Could be right. Thanks.
Anyhow off to do my bit for retail. Catch you guys later
Leroy @ 103 linked to Ian Verrender’s last column and the sentence that stood out for me is :
The more vulnerable media companies become, the less capable they are of withstanding the pressure of vested interests and the more susceptible they will be to attack. Many will adopt the easy way out, that it is best to simply not cause trouble.
He goes on to say journos will revert to soft and fawning. How true. Verrender was an ocean of calm and sense in business reporting, hosing down inflated expectations and debunking predictions of catastrophe. I will miss his columns and he had a couple of minutes on the radio every morning which I will also miss. Good luck Ian.
[I very much doubt it as she has a deal with the indies to go full term, and the polls aren’t nearly good enough yet.]
Diog, conceding so soon? Start writing your $500 cheque
At the next 2013 election, Abbott (if he is still there) will be endorsed by Alan Jones talking to an empty chaff bag #auspol
I don’t think the government is going to call an early election to avoid the possibility of a death in the parliament in that space of a handful of months.
Sheez 😯
I try to be open-minded but really…
Just right now, 11am, walking back home, supermarket bag in one hand, beautiful sunny morning, when I was asked by someone emerging from the open back of a parked station wagon, whether I had any scissors – so he could cut some joints!!
😮
Centre
I didn’t say that – what I said is that they are wanting to be as ready as possible IN CASE such an event occurs.
Let me tell you, the government is NOT going to call an early election. I am on our local campaign team and I have not received a phone call yet to come into work. Neither have we even opened a campaign office yet.
I’m with Centre. Election after the Grand Final season is over. After South Sydney win their 2nd NRL premiership in a row. 😀
ajm
[what I said is that they are wanting to be as ready as possible IN CASE such an event occurs.]
No I don’t think the government needs to be as ready as possible for such an event.
WHY?
Because the odds of that happening are extreme to the point that it is useless to consider 🙂
Somtimes, we should just remember the less fortunate.
Ben Pobjie @benpobjie
I feel pretty bad, but other people have it worse. At least I’m not being pursued by an 8-metre vagina dentata like Alan Jones.
Jon Stewart is a living National American Treasure:
centre,
Every one needs to prepare for when the aliens invade too. Clean underwear is a must.
Ever since the 2010 election Lib shills in the media have been demanding a new election. Now they tut-tut at the PM because they think she might call an early election?
These people are beyond parody.
[After South Sydney win their 2nd NRL premiership in a row.]
😆
They’ll be lucky to win a game in the final series after last night’s performance 😛
Here’s the list of 2GB sponsors, in case anyone would like to know who to avoid. Especially if you are a woman who wants to wreck the joint that employs Alan Jones:
http://www.2gb.com/index.php?option=com_adcentre&Itemid=187
GG @ 130 😆
That was good.
Clint and the empty seat.
https://twitter.com/mariekehardy/status/241705312787255296/photo/1
Flipper
You should be praying for an early election. It’s your best chance.
PS I win no matter what. I got Gillard at good odds.
steve777 @ 96
[Today’s Daily Telegraph’s home page has a headline “Labor sells off the farm to China”. This linked to a story about the approval by the Treasurer of the sale of Cubby station to a Chinese-lead consortium. The story itself, and the headline on the actual story page, are quite balanced. The fact is, the headline on the home page linking to the story is inaccurate and I suspect wilfully so.]
What’s the difference these days between the Daily Telegraph and the Australian Financial Review?
Headline on page 3 of the AFR:
[Chinese can take control of Cubbie]
Diogs
Subtract the $500 you will be giving Finns and you got bad odds 😛
Centre,
The Bunnies defense was exemplary. Greg Inglis’ try was superb. Greg Inglis’ try-stopping tackle was game-changing. The rest of the team are playing well and just just need to iron out a few wrinkles in the first couple of finals matches and Grand Final here we come! 😀
Diogs,
Why is it not a surprise that you would be backing both sides in an argument?
You’ve finally found a way to make prevarication and dissembling profitable.
It’s a strange, strange world you live in Master Jack.
Centre
How are the Fairfax shares doing and what do you predict for the future?
Looked at the list of advertisers on Jones (2GB), but am only familiar with the Waterhouse mob, as I am from Melbourne. Obviously, it is very localised advertising. Do any of the big banks or retail chains, for example, advertise with them?
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-31/exclusive-inside-karl-roves-billionaire-fundraiser
[2012 Campaign
Exclusive: Inside Karl Rove’s Billionaire Fundraiser
By Sheelah Kolhatkar on August 31, 2012
On the final morning of the Republican National Convention, Karl Rove took the stage at the Tampa Club to provide an exclusive breakfast briefing to about 70 of the Republican Party’s highest-earning and most powerful donors. During the more than hour-long session, Rove explained to an audience dotted with hedge fund billionaires and investors—including John Paulson and Wilbur Ross—how his super PAC, American Crossroads, will persuade undecided voters in crucial swing states to vote against Barack Obama. He also detailed plans for Senate and House races, and joked, “We should sink Todd Akin. If he’s found mysteriously murdered, don’t look for my whereabouts!”]
more in the article
That piece by Trioli is a zinger. Thanks to all PBers for the link. Email to Reith with a copy attached? Or tweet?
Sohar@142,
I’d say that Westpac, led as it is by a woman, if it did before, would no longer advertise with 2GB after Jones’ comments yesterday. 🙂
Catmomma
I think South Sydney are in the tough side of the series. It most likely will read:
Division 1. Bulldogs, Manly, Cows and Broncos.
Division 2. Storm, Bunnies, Sharks and Raiders.
Good luck shock:
Bemused, I think FJX are worth obtaining as a medium to long term hold.
As per BK’s link earlier on DP, a very interesting observation from the Kitney piece
[Character is key to Gillard’s strategy.
Gillard’s character has been at the centre of the political debate since she became leader. The carbon tax “lie”, on top of the “back stabbing” of Kevin Rudd offered Abbott, the opposition and a willing crowd of critics, easy targets to make Gillard’s big character a problem for Labor.
Courage, strength and consistency in the face of great odds and under unrelenting pressure are the character traits on which Gillard has sought to remake her image and to overcome her truth and trust deficits.
Again, Howard’s story offers her inspiration. After a long and damaging campaign targeting his “lie” and lack of trustworthiness over a goods and services tax, Howard made trust part of his winning formula.]
http://www.afr.com/p/opinion/echoes_of_howard_with_character_cKmm3YFmXLZOup4dfLfLxL
Centre
Re FXJ – things could be worse: did you see what happened to APN’s share price yesterday? Hoo-ha
Centre @ 146
You seem to be the lone optimist.
What is your reasoning?
Laocoon
FXJ is not APN.
Bemused, no, I am not the lone optimist at all.
Fairfax will be in a very sound position to be the number 1. news organisation in the computer/digital future with the NBN. They will smash Rupe’s News Ltd.
Also, the coy may now even be an attractive takeover proposition.